


When my time comes around

by FalseConfidence



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Ghosts, Happy Ending, Humor, Joe dies first, M/M, Nicky is ready to get this show on the road
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26102440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalseConfidence/pseuds/FalseConfidence
Summary: The first thought Nicky has, as he stares at the blood tracking a slow, sluggish trail, down his face, is that it’s about fucking time.---Sometimes dying, for the final time, is not a sad event.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 69
Kudos: 383





	When my time comes around

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I'm so on my bullshit with this film. I can't remember the last time that I watched the same thing about five times in the space of a fortnight, and then immediately started writing about fifty different ideas down at once.
> 
> This came about because the thought of either Nicky or Joe outlasting the other broke my heart and then I took it upon myself to fix it immediately. <3

The first thought Nicky has, as he stares at the blood tracking a slow, sluggish trail, down his face, is that it’s about fucking time.

Then after the initial shock of it hits him like a bullet, he staggers back until his knees hit the bathtub behind him and he sits on the rim, periodically pushing a finger to the thin line to collect another droplet to stare at, pink and foamy from the cream still smeared over his face, razor abandoned somewhere on the floor.

It’s the moment he’s been waiting for about twenty years now, and now that he’s confronted with his newly discovered mortality, all he seems able to do is wipe the saline from his eyes and shake back and forth in a series of fine tremors as it all crashes down on him with an undeniable certainty.

Nile isn’t surprised, she’s kind and sweet and generous enough to truly feel happy for him when he shouts for her and she comes skittering around the doorway. Watches as she raises shaking hands and rubs a thumb over the demarcation of his old life and this startling new reality.

Booker doesn’t believe it when he returns to them a week later, not at first, not until Nicky delights in the simple act of scraping a nail a little too hard across the soft delicate underside of his arm, leaving a darker line that doesn’t instantaneously fade but lingers like any true mark should.

(At one point he's so unbelievably bitter that he never got to look at his own reflection and see the proof of his lovers touch on his skin that acid churns in his gut)

He probably could have shot himself and it would have left less of an effect, as Booker turns ashen, collapses against the wall behind him, overwrought by the knowledge that he’s about to be the oldest of them, has to bear the cross now.

\---

Nicky thinks briefly of ending it then and there, that very night, as Nile and Booker are plotting out their plans to infiltrate a mercenary group in what he thinks was once London, a long, _long_ , time ago.

But he realises, that he can’t do that to them, nor himself. Suicide is not the way he wishes to go about ending what he has to remind himself has been a gift, and it has been a _spectacular_ one, that gave the better part of three-thousand years with a love that never smouldered or withered, turned to chalk in his fingers.

He lives because Joe would kill him if he quit before the finish line, and they've already begun one eternity in this manner and it probably wouldn't be correct to tempt fate with another.

\---

The next few decades go with a strange filter over them, neither fast, nor slow. He’s already receding from the world, strange and bizarre as it’s formed over the span of his life, and he’s filled with an exhaustion most days to just get this over with. It’s as if the date has been writ in his flesh, revealing as it starts to age, grows freckled and soft, and the closer he gets to the end the more he champs at the bit.

He tries to stay as present as he can for Nile, for Booker, for himself as well, to say that he didn’t fade into a shell before he’s finished. They don’t leave him now the judgement has been served, much like they rallied for Andy, when Booker came back to them a mere decade into that century of isolation, resentment vanquished so their boss (for that’s a title that can only ever belong to her) could have her family together.

Nicky thinks of Quynh, how she folded back into their lives with such temerity, such determination to conquer something so great he can’t begin to fathom the scope of her terror. How she smelt of tangerines peeled for her gnarled fingers at the very end when she followed Andy only a century after.

He thinks of Joe, of his great heart heaving out its last without ever giving him a chance to prepare, no warning that _this_ was to be their last time, no chance to cherish and savour the very core of his being.

The pain of it is enough to dismantle and crush him when he least expects it, has done so on many an occasion.

Now, Nicky feels hopeful as he sifts through Joe’s art one morning in a villa in what once upon a time existed as Malta, stares at his husband’s imagination dappled across canvases in all their glory for him to admire.

Booker takes him out one day, asks him for help on a mission that really doesn’t require him, the shots an easy one that Nile could hit with ease, and yet he remains silent when Booker pushes the rifle into his hands. Crouches in the window of a long abandoned hotel in a long abandoned village, in a country that once he knew the name of, may have visited the market square with Joe and bought goods with money that he hasn’t touched in centuries.

It’s rather obvious why Booker has asked this of him, as he drops into that state of awareness that spreads in concentric circles, radiating out of him until it feels as if he can hear the flap of a butterfly’s wings as his breath aligns, finger squeezes, and three of the worlds worst men drop to the ground with a resounding crack, the retort rocking Nicky back although he’s prepared for it.

Booker whoops, cheers and hollers even as they’re racing down long abandoned streets, even when he takes a knife to the back, has his ear shot clean off before they finally lose their pursuers and Nicky is laughing at his vibrant joy.

Even as a bullet rips through Nicky's shoulder.

Especially so when they finally make it home and Nile, who first approaches them with affection and sincerity, and then with slowly morphing horror at the blood staining Nicky’s shirt, proceeds to throw the baccarat board at Booker’s head.

Nicky laughs until he’s hunched over as pain and pleasure swirl like oil and water,

and the years continue to pass,

slipping by at their own leisure.

\---

His patience becomes a little worse for wear as his skin starts to wrinkle, fingers aching at the slightest hint of rain, his hair has finally turned an exceptionally ‘fetching’ shade of silver as Nile keeps telling him. Nicky thinks that she’s trying to be kind to cover the increasing sense of despair she’s been struggling to compartmentalise.

Nicky catalogues each minute change with a fascination borne from a desperate need to know how close he is to that finish line so to speak. He never had the chance to witness Joe’s transformation into a venerable age. Something that he feels most cheated by when he considers how distinguished the light of his life would look in the waning moonlight beside him as Nicky is now.

The first big change comes when he’s squinting at the pile of documents in front of him where he’s trying to make sure that his and Joe’s estates are in order. He needs to make sure that everything is safely transferred to Nile before the time comes, he’s asked Booker but the man wants nothing from him, _“just give me a few more years to enjoy watching you hobble about Nicky.”_

Nicky thinks the man intends for it to come across with a hint of sarcasm, but Nicky catches the bob of his throat, the shine in his eyes, as he storms out of the room. Feels a rush of affection for his brother whose most salient emotion has always been found in the open vein of love wrapped and coated in guilt that he has cultivated through various stages of grief.

But back to Nicky – he’s allowed to be selfish occasionally, for he is after all dying – he’s staring at the accumulation of three-thousand years of purchases and trying to remember if the apartment in old, _old_ , San Francisco would even still be standing when he realises he’s squinting.

“Nile?”

She pops up in an instant, as she seems to do now, always waiting for him, nervous and terrified in equal measure that she’ll find him on the floor one day.

“Does this look blurred to you?” He hands the top paper over and awaits her verdict.

“No, I had it printed in a larger font as well.”

“Huh.” Nicky leans back in his chair and feels something pop in his back, not in a pleasant manner. “It seems it’s time.”

Which is probably a little more ominous than a simple trip to have his eyes checked warrants.

(Nicky’s dying. He gets to enjoy being eccentric.)

They go for the more old-fashioned route, and Nile takes a great delight in taking him to the ophthalmologist, in guiding him through the stacks of frames after his appointment, putting numerous choices against the side of his face until she’s made a shortlist.

Nicky is certain that he’s made the right choice when he puts the first pair on. He doesn’t recognise himself in the full length mirror, mainly because he hadn’t realised quite how badly everything had become misaligned in the last few months. The small, subsection part of that is the shock of seeing a reminder, after so many lifetimes, that he’s on his way. Nicolo is almost finished, and he’s never been more ready.

“Joe would have enjoyed this.” He confesses, in more ways than one.

Nile reaches up and adjusts the frames until they’re sitting balanced on his nose correctly before gently patting his cheek. “I wouldn’t have been able to come home for a week.”

Nicky tilts his head in the mirror. “That would have been brave of you.”

“You’re right. I’d have given it at least a month.” She grins and helps him gather his things.

The kind woman, who’s probably paid an extortionate amount of money to receive an education in a field that’s mostly been made redundant in lieu of the technological advances made, cannot stop praising them as Nicky pays. “You’ll look very refined sir.”

“You hear that Nile, refined.” He nods sagely. Clearly a lady of fine intellect.

“And you’re such a kind girl helping your grandfather so patiently.”

Nile is mortified.

Hisses in a long dead dialect. _“Is she fucking blind! Give her your glasses.”_

Nicky is delighted.

He tips the lady thrice the worth of the glasses in exchange the longest bout of laughter he’s had in a long while.

\---

Every new illness Nicky embraces with an enthusiasm that has Nile scowling, and for a while Nicky can’t resist the temptation of sitting in the rain outside of their safe house in… shit, he can’t remember, and what does it matter at this point when the blasted countries won’t have the decency to make up their minds and settle on _one fucking name._

Anyway… Where was he…

Ah, the brief period of time spent sitting on a small bench, encouraging the chill seeping into the very marrow of him, easy to do when the payoff might be a particularly rampant cold that’ll finally do him in. If he’s really fortunate, he might be able to contract pneumonia.

Though any fatal illness will do him. Nicky isn’t fussy.

It’s a habit he breaks, in the end, because of Nile.

He walks in one morning, cane an awkward fucker to try and work with even with months of practice, after what feels like a veritable monsoon, cursing the three small steps he has to manoeuvre, and something has him instinctively pausing at the threshold to the kitchen, peering inside and then his innards feel shredded for the first time in, say, eighty years.

Nile startles, bleeding diamonds from her eyes and furiously scrubs her face with the back of her hand, but Nicky has seen them, recognises the source immediately, and when she hurtles into his arms, uncaring of the puddle he’s dripping onto the ground, Nicky swears that he shall no longer try to hurry the reaper in to take him. Not while she’s still there, still needs him even if all he can do is wheeze around the crushing grip she has on his rib and thrash her at baccarat.

\---

There’s another year.

One where he slows to a degree that he finds himself moving at a glacial pace through the world, the younger, newer, fresh behind the ear immortals (he wishes he could feel ashamed for never learning their names when one, then the other, appears in the space of six months, but he hasn’t the energy) avoid him mainly to allow space for Booker and Nile to greedily hoard every last second with him.

He basks in their attention, truthfully, takes the late nights listening to Nile read from the small collection of books he’s kept through the Millennia, finds Booker reciting from the now antiquated bible, infinitely patient when he has to repeat the same three passages over, and over, and over again as Nicky finds his memory starts to grow patchy.

Truly, he would try to force himself to be more present in these moments, but all of his failing cognitive abilities remain focused on retaining the scent of his Yusef as they lay in the leeward rain shadow of the Vosges and his love traced their names out across his quivering belly.

“I’m going to think that you like the sound of my voice after all, asshole.” Booker hums as he goes to start the same page again for the sixth time.

“The sound of shattered glass can be soothing if you have to listen to it a thousand times, Book.” He laughs and then winces.

“I hope that hurts.” Booker leans towards his armchair with a little too much concern in his eyes for Nicky to cope with.

So it’s enjoyable to know that he still has it in him to swipe the cane out when Booker stands and it’s worth the month of aching and shuffling when the blonde is on the ground staring up at him in disbelief.

He turns to see if Joe saw and pulls short at the empty space in his blind spot where his love should be.

Yeah, Nicky’s ready to get this show on the road.

This feels like it though, the real deal.

Nicky’s in bed, he’s been laid up for a few weeks, not from pneumonia as he jokes with Nile, but a simple infection that seems to be on board with Nicky’s plan to finally get this other with.

He’s lying slightly raised, pillows arranged to relieve the heavy weight of fluid in his lungs, most of the time he’s sleeping now, and in a way he’s guilty of whiling away their last moments, feels a hollow pang in his chest each time he wakes up to find Nile and Booker there, always watching, always waiting for any last seconds they can wring out with him.

It’s the early hours, he can feel dawns not far off, and Nicky thinks, as he dozes, that it isn’t likely he’ll see this one in, almost wishes he’d had some premonition, to stay awake the night before to feel the warmth through the window panes one last time. Nile is curled in a ball a few inches to his left, fingers wrapped around his wrist, subconsciously feeling his pulse and Nicky would reach out to brush a hand through her hair, valiantly raises sufficient energy to do so, but Booker’s on his other side, forehead pressed to the thin skin of his upper arm, breath blowing coolly across his skin.

None of them have had one of those supposed talks, the emotional climax of a story where the soon to be deceased imparts wisdom to their loved ones before their eyelids shutter and they’re gone on a peaceful breeze.

It’s bollocks.

All of it.

What would he have to say to them, he isn’t the wordsmith, they would have been better off if it were Yusef they were clinging to.

But he also thinks,

_Nile, I have cherished you beyond measure, my beautiful girl._

_Sebastien, I leave this life a better man for the treasure of your friendship._

It’s not a lot, but it’s the best he has, so he croaks it out to their restful faces and smiles.

Nicky’s ready, he is, he’s been ready since that first cut all those years ago.

He’s still going to miss this.

“Not a bad way to go, all things considered. Though you can’t help but take your time can you, Nicolo.”

Thankfully, he hasn’t required a hearing aid in his decline, and so when he hears the voice he thinks that it’s finally the pain relief blurring his all of his lines into insanity. Morphine is one hell of a drug he thinks as he turns his head to tell this intruder to _fuck off and let him die at his own damned pace, thank you_.

The curse dries on his tongue.

“You look resplendent, my heart.” Yusuf sits at the foot of his bed, a perfect replicate of the man that bled out in Nicky’s arms. He looks much the way Nicky remembers him, as if the last eighty-three years are meaningless.

“Not as good as you.” He stares at this apparition, this beautiful man in awe, because as far as Angels go, he’d trade a whole host for the honour of dying with his heart back where it should be, at his side, the true north to his compass finally returned.

“I stand by what I said, Nicolo, you’ve taken far too long.”

“Have you been waiting for me? This whole time?”

“Where else would I go?”

Nicky laughs, or he thinks he does, he’s feeling rather light, numb if he were to put a word to it. Says, “you could have done reconnaissance on the other side,” of all fucking things.

“I couldn’t have gone without you. We go through together.”

Nicky almost points out Yusuf did leave him, not that it matters now. “That would be nice, I’d hope to come through in a better form than this one.”

“I’d be honoured to have you with me in any form.” Yusef insists, mouth a firm line.

“I appreciate the sentiment, love.” Nicky wants so very badly to reach out and touch him. “But I was referring to the fact that I haven’t been able to stand straight for the last three years without throwing my back out.”

Yusuf laughs. “I doubt that will be a problem.”

Nicky watches the crinkles bracketing those pretty eyes he used to spend his time admiring with such fervour, and it’s not until he catches the side glance Yusuf gives before he realises, he’s knelt upright, pitching forwards. He turns and sees a rather disturbing sight.

“You distracted me from my death.” He accuses, stares at his body curiously.

“I thought you’d be happy.” Yusuf looks at him bemused. “Who wishes to sit through their own passing.”

“I had it planned.” Nicky mourns. “I was going to close my eyes, whisper your name on my last breath, and then wake up to a blinding white room and you’d emerge bathed in an ethereal light.”

“And Booker always said that I was the one with grandiose plans.” Yusuf says. “Would you like me to go so you can try again?”

Nicky almost falls over his own body – which is weird, right? – in his haste to climb into Yusuf’s lap, feels warm, real hands clasp his thighs until he’s flush with his husband and then his face is pressed in the crook of Yusuf’s neck. Breathing in all of the tiny components that make up this man he’s loved since he died and was reborn on a field dripping crimson, and all he can’t think of is trying to put to words what it is to have Yusuf's hands splayed across his skin once more. All of the soft, beautiful things he thought he’d seen in the last eighty-three years outstripped by the watery smile Yusuf breathes into his skin, the hands that grip his, strength once more returned and without really understanding Nicky knows that it’s them again.

_Joe and Nicky,_

_Joseph and Nico,_

_Yosef and Nicholas,_

_Yusuf and Nicolo._

And all of the other names they’ve adopted for themselves through the years, identities that only fit when held between the broad palms cupping his face now. All while Nicky sinks into it, lets all that he is melt under the gentle strokes of Yusuf’s needy hands, hands that he knows so intimately, that’s he’s been missing, and silently, secretly, _breaking_ apart without the pressure of for near _eighty-three years_ , where he’s already mending, can tell without sight that he’s no longer a day past whence they last met and there’s a fission of heat pulsing through his stomach and Yusuf hasn’t even kissed him yet.

“I think,” Yusuf's lips brush over his, once, twice, and then mostly settle there, shifting as he speaks and Nicky just basks in it, “that we’re meant to move on now.”

“How would you know; you haven’t bothered to get any intel.” He teases.

“Excuse me for wishing to remain at your side until the end, Nicolo.”

They laugh and it’s so good to laugh once more and feel like he isn’t an impostor for sequestering a tiny portion of himself for his love.

He turns to look at himself once more, to feast on the sight of Nile and Sebastien one last time, for however long eternity wishes to cling to them.

Nile is still curled up, eyes wet and wide, fingers tracing his wrist, her free hand reaching over him to curl around Sebastien’s shoulder, and it’s a sign of how very tired his friend, _his brother_ , has become keeping vigil at his side for countless nights that he doesn’t stir just yet. Nile holds him anyway, traps Nicky’s body in a cage of her arms and lies there, staring at his face, a little defeated but still _there_. She’ll come out of this a dwindling ember, like they all did with Andy, but with time she’ll become the unstoppable inferno she was born to be.

“Are you ready, my love?” Yusuf says.

“Yes, my heart.” Nicolo answers and turns to follow the light of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Hozier's _Work Song_ which I must have listened to a dozen times while writing this because it fit the ending perfectly in my head <3


End file.
